The critical reflective practice model did not necessarily displace so much as become grafted on to existing methods of social work practice, especially methods that include problem-solving techniques, self-awareness, and ideas about the unconscious. Later versions incorporated ideas from radical social work; structural ideas and postmodern concepts such as
deconstruction and power/knowledge. Early in the formation phase, however the main addition to the existing education model was the use of critical incident technique, developed in psychology in the 1950s and which had been adapted by Australian social workers
undertaking research on the development of expertise and skill in social work. Figure nine represents some of these aspects:
Figure 9: Existing and new knowledge utilised for the critical reflective model
The reflective practice model eventually became known as the critical reflection model through its adoption of social theory informed by critical theory, particularly of the feminist and structural kinds.
Argyris & Schon (1974) Business Critical theories (Agger, 1991) Dreyfus & Dreyfus (1986) Artificial Intelligence; philosophy Feminist perspectives (Petruchenia & Thorpe, 1990) Benner, 1994 Psychology, Nursing Post- modernism (Pease & Fook, 1999)
Enunciative modalities
Individual speaker status, institutional and technical sites and subject positions
There are three groups who would become positioned to speak about the gap between theory and practice, each with different levels of status and authority: Academics with extensive practice histories; practitioners who supervise students or practitioners who have occupied social work positions which embody professional notions of what real social work is and field education coordinators and students who have experienced field placement. Not all of these speakers enjoy equal status in speaking of the gap between practice and theory.
Interestingly, the gap is described by academics and researchers more than practitioners. For practitioners there was little or no gap; there is the practice and the skills to do it.
Knowledge is seen as practical and driven by need that arises from the context. Practitioners are more concerned with the problems of practice: working with clients; agency politics; funding issues and the need for activism in terms of increasing access to services for clients who were being left behind due to the myriad of social problems they were contending with. Practitioners may hold a perception that learning in the formal social work curriculum is sometimes less relevant to practice, they nevertheless value academic social work
education for its status with regard to social work as a profession. The part played by practitioners in the adoption and dispersion of reflective practice was not as developers of practice theory, but rather as confessors. Even so, practitioner stories remain an important element in the spread of training of the model. These stories supply authority and remain important to the development of this social work critical reflective practice model even today.
In addition to the stories from practice delivered by practitioners participating in training in the model, there were also significant practitioner subgroups that were instrumental in its dispersion. These were practitioners keen on pursuing postgraduate studies. Up until at least 1975 social work services were primarily casework services and tended to occur in agencies situated in the public sector. There were significant changes to the arrangements for welfare occurring across the Australia. Changes to funding arrangements, job titles, and
new services ushered in new accountabilities. Public sector functions were increasingly outsourced to a growing non-government sector, which certainly offered opportunities but in quite different industrial circumstances. Job security and tenure became a significant issue for social work practitioners. There was also a need for new skills to fit this changing
industrial landscape. Due to the growing non-government sector practitioners found themselves requiring skills in sourcing funding, designing programs and interventions, managing and evaluating programs in addition to advancing practice knowledge in areas already viewed as traditional such as interpersonal and communication skills, casework and group work practice. Practitioners also found themselves needing to account for their
practice in ways they had not previously experienced. Debates about the nature of the practice and knowledge of social work became invigorated by practitioner tales of this changing landscape.
Growth in postgraduate Social Work courses in Australia had been very slow until the introduction of a Master level qualification in social work in 2008. For the most of social works’ professional existence in Australia the majority have undertaken education at the undergraduate level. The four year undergraduate course only became as standard from the 1970s. This level of qualification was considered sufficient for a good career with reasonable advancement within the Australian welfare sector. This perception changed with the
transformations to the sector resulting in increased competition for jobs amongst welfare professionals. One group stands out as particularly relevant to this competition that is psychologists. Social Work practitioners found themselves competing with psychology graduates, often holding master level qualifications.
Two other groups are also significant to being able to describe the problem of the gap between theory and practice: field education coordinators89 and social work students,
especially those undertaking field placements in their final years of a social work course.
89 Field education coordinators are responsible for the delivery of the field education also known as work-
integrated learning. This involves extensive negotiation and close networking with practitioners, agency managers, and students for the purposes of creating field placements. Field education coordinators are typically employed for their extensive practice experience (Zuchowski, Hudson, Bartlett, & Diamandi, 2014)
Thus field educators with strong connections to the field, academics who maintain
connections with practice and practitioners who supervised social work students were all significant authorities able to describe and speak on the gap between theory, associated with learning in a formal academic setting and the kind of learning that occurs in the ‘real world’ of social work practice. Field education coordinators often found themselves situated between practice and academia and thus felt criticism from both sides for being seen as either too academic or too practice focussed. Reflective practice would not significantly permeate social work undergraduate education beyond field placement for some time. It was the early 2000s that it began to permeate social work curriculums more broadly in part due to its adoption into practice standards and accreditation documents.
Practice research is another site from which this model of reflective practice emerged. There had been little research undertaken in social work; even less on understanding the
knowledge base, practices and skills of students and practitioners. The first site was a study on knowledge and skill development, the first of its kind in Australia. Here the basic use of the critical incident tool was combined with recall to ask practitioners and students what knowledge they used in their work. The impetus for this study was to interrogate what impact beliefs and theoretical assumptions had on the actions of social workers in practice? Not much as it turns out. There was a significant gap between what practitioners and students considered theoretically and how they behaved in practice.
The key point here is that the critical reflection model did not specifically emerge as a practice model from practice. Very few accounts of reflective practice were produced by practitioners prior to this period. In fact, descriptions of practice by practitioners were, and possibly still are, quite rare. They were mainly found in conference papers. Thus,
understanding practice reflection on practice emerged from sites concerned with learning and where practitioners intersected with academics.